Presidential Narcissism

Hat tip to Neal Boortz , who introduced this column thus: "Victor Davis Hanson has some thoughts on what he calls Presidential Narcissism.  In this regard, he calls Bill Clinton and Barack Obama “brothers beneath the skin.” "

Victor Davis Hanson   ...."And aside from the fact that Barack Obama promised never to “spike the football” by using the SEAL mission to score campaign points, only a narcissistic Bill Clinton could have envisioned the death or capture of Navy SEALs not in terms of those men’s own horrible fates, but only as political “downside” for an equally narcissistic Barack Obama."

...".In other words, I worry that Vladimir Putin, the Iranian theocrats, the North Korean apparat, the Chinese central committee, the Muslim Brotherhood, and all the others who detest the United States have sized up Barack Obama. For 40 months they have acknowledged that his postracial image and his youthful charisma, as David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs rightly insisted, threw them for a loop — for a while. And that “for a while” is now ending, replaced with a new belief abroad that the more Obama talks about himself and his team, and the more emphatic he becomes with his “Make no mistake about it” and “Let me be perfectly clear” vacuities, the more he can at first safely be ignored, and then, quite soon, safely be taken advantage of.

"The problem with a narcissistic president is not just that he sees the world as all about himself, but that the world soon sees that it is not about him at all."


Elliott Abrams:  ‘On My Behalf’ Really?  "Most Americans thought they were fighting for the country, not on Barack Obama’s behalf.  Slip of the tongue, to be sure, but can one think of another president who’d have made it?  They are fighting under his command, under his orders, to be sure, but this particular locution is offensive and solipsistic.  Mr. Obama has switched his position on the sanctity of marriage back and forth and has a new one, again, today, revealed when politics made that advisable to him and to his campaign.  Whether this is the end or he will “evolve” some more is anyone’s guess.

"But let’s leave our soldiers out of this. They aren’t fighting for Mr. Obama and his campaign, and no one sent them out to risk their lives to win same sex “marriage.”